Petitions of the day

Issues: (1) Whether military commissions’ assumption of the federal courts’ subject-matter jurisdiction over wholly domestic crimes, such as conspiracy, violates Article III’s reservation of the “trial of all crimes” to the judiciary; (2) whether the Military Commissions Act’s codification of crimes not otherwise recognized as war crimes under international law was intended to apply retroactively and, if so, whether that violates the ex post facto clause; and (3) whether the Military Commissions Act’s establishment of a segregated criminal justice system in which only non-citizens are subject to military commission jurisdiction violates the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under law.

Issues: (1) Whether the majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in extending the doctrine associated with Schlessinger v. Councilman to trial by military commission, when doing so foreclosed a core habeas corpus claim; (2) whether the “extraordinary circumstances” exception to abstention is met when a capital defendant can show that trial will cause irreparable injuries that flow directly from respondents’ own misconduct and, in particular, respondents’ decision to subject him to years of “physical, psychological, and sexual torture”; and (3) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s uniquely restrictive standard, whereby any “open question” of law is categorically unreviewable via mandamus, is inconsistent with the All Writs Act.